Are you the delegated “trash person” in your household? Well, lucky me…I am. One of the annoyances in performing this “job” is that if you wait too long to throw the trash and everybody  just keeps filling it up and compacting it down just to squeeze in more trash, then you will have a hard time pulling out the trash bag. I actually had some ripped bags because of this and which added more work for me because now, I also have to re-bag the trash.

The issue is that when you fill up the trash until it is really full and heavy, when you pull it out from the trash can, a “suction” effect will add more resistance aside from the weight of the trash itself and usually you will need another person to help you or you use your feet or legs to secure the trash can while you are pulling out the bag. A lot more work and worse, the bag will tear and make more mess.

To prevent the suction effect or at least minimize it, a simple hack is to drill 4 or more holes in the bottom corner of your trash can. The bigger the hole the better. In mine, I used a 1/4 inch  bit and drilled 4 holes in the bottom corner. This will equalize the pressure  by letting some air in through the holes when you pull out the trash bag.

You might want to put the holes at least a couple of inches from the bottom of the can so that if at any event that there is a liquid spill, then it will not spill out from the holes that you drilled.